Why Hotels Need Consistent Signage — Our Work for The Cosener’s House

If you’ve seen Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector — in which ailing hotels are giving a makeover by the terrifying Alex Polizzi — you’ll notice that the signage almost always gets an overhaul. Apart from generally modernising the signs, they also ensure these are consistent throughout the premises. All the signs use the same palette of colours and fonts. Even the language may have the same ‘tone’ (hip, jokey, formal etc).

So why is consistency so important for hotel signs? There are two main reasons:

Consistent Signage Pleases the Eye

Signs are designed to draw your attention. Presumably, that’s why we notice when they don’t match. When a hotel has ten different signs in ten different styles, they tend to leap even more into our visual foreground, and for most people, that looks messy and discordant.

Changing up those clashing styles for one consistent one just feels right; it brings about an instant ‘ahhh, that’s better!’ Of course, if you’ve gone for a really garish colour combination, it could makes things worse… but that’s another story.

Consistent Signage Reinforces Your Brand

The second great reason for keeping things consistent is the need to reinforce your brand.

Visual branding — the colours, fonts, logos and so on that you choose — is a kind of shorthand for what you offer. Your branding is a visual cue that sticks in the memory. Top corporations understand just how powerful these cues are when it comes to consumer behaviour. That’s why they’re happy to spend eye-watering sums on the minutiae of their brands, knowing how much it benefits their bottom line.

Seen like this, signage shouldn’t just be about conveying information. Each sign you display is also an opportunity to reinforce your brand. Again, ten different signs in ten different styles won’t achieve this. If you don’t give your business a consistent identity, how do you expect them to remember it?

Putting it Together at The Cosener’s House

We think you can see how well all this works in the signage we installed at The Cosener’s House. This is a beautiful hotel, wedding venue and conference centre near Abingdon. The building sits right next the Thames. In fact, it’s actually on a small island and you have to cross a bridge to get to it.

We were commissioned to update all of the signage both inside and out. It involved installing a lot of signs, including the front entrance sign, building signs, internal door signs and directional signage.

Looking at the photos, you can see how well having a consistent theme works (just to be clear, we’re not taking credit for this!). We think that the signs look great: the consistent theme really helps to tie everything on the site together. And just as important, the consistency creates a clear sense of the hotel’s identity. What do you think?

Tech Specs

The wall signs were direct-printed and brushed composite. The large entrance sign has brushed silver vinyl applied to the face. At the owners’ request, we added a section to the top of the main sign, to stop tree sap and bird droppings falling on the sign face. Excellent idea!

Need to Update Your Hotel Signage?

If your hotel signs are a bit of a hotch-potch (or just becoming dated), please get in touch. As you can see from our work above, we can produce and install signs that do your establishment proud.